US Hits Iranian Coastal Targets in New Strike Wave as Trump Threatens Power Plants and Bridges Next

Since the ceasefire brokered last month collapsed in the days after, the US and Iran have moved from a fragile truce to open, near-daily strikes. Wednesday morning marked the latest round: US Central Command said on X that it began launching strikes against Iran at 6 a.m. ET, wrapping up by 7:30 a.m., hitting Iranian coastal defense systems and cruise missile storage and launch sites on Greater Tunb Island in the Persian Gulf, according to CNBC.

That followed a seven-hour US strike campaign late Tuesday that hit dozens of military targets near the Strait of Hormuz and along Iran's coast, according to the New York Post. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Wednesday it had hit back at US military targets in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan, and threatened to shut down additional regional energy export corridors, warning the US to "brace for the closure of all other export corridors that benefit the US and its allies," the Post reported.

The US says Iran has attacked seven commercial ships over the past week, leaving nearly a dozen crew members dead, missing, or injured, according to the Post. Washington is citing the need to protect shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a corridor that carried roughly a fifth of global oil and gas shipments before the war started.

Trump's Fox News Interview

Hours before Wednesday's strikes, President Trump sat down with Fox News Chief Foreign Correspondent Trey Yingst for an interview aired Tuesday on Special Report. Asked whether strikes would expand to energy infrastructure, Trump said yes, but framed it as leverage: "I'll save the energy targets for last, but, ultimately, we'll hit energy targets... We're going to hit them very hard tonight. We're going to hit them very hard tomorrow night. We're going to hit them very hard the night after, and then, next week, it gets really bad for them, because next week comes the power plants, next week comes the bridges," according to Breitbart's transcript of the interview.

Trump added the caveat that matters most: "unless they get to the table and negotiate." This is coercive diplomacy through bombing, not just open-ended destruction.

On the broader war aims, Trump told Yingst the US has already achieved what it set out to do. "I think they're completed now, honestly. If we left right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild what they have," Trump said, per Breitbart. He argued the only way to negotiate with Iran is through demonstrated military strength, and claimed "two days ago, we had a deal, and then they broke it at the last moment."

Trump said strikes would continue "until I say that's enough," describing Iran's military as badly degraded but still capable of a counterpunch: "It's like a great boxer, you think you have him beat, and then, all of a sudden, he comes back and he gives you a shot. They have some fight left, but they don't have much."

The Money Angle Quietly Dropped

Trump had floated a 20% levy on cargo shipped through the Strait of Hormuz earlier in the week, according to CNBC, but abandoned that demand on Tuesday. Instead, he said Gulf states would invest in the US as a form of repayment. It's unclear whether that investment commitment will materialize.

Market and Shipping Reaction

Oil prices kept climbing. Brent crude futures held above $85 a barrel Wednesday morning, extending gains of about 1% after settling at a one-month high Tuesday, according to CNBC.

Jakob Larsen, chief safety and security officer at the international shipping body BIMCO, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" that the shipping industry is struggling to navigate the constant reversals. "All these messages going back and forth and changing direction completely just adds to the confusion and the complexity of the whole situation," Larsen said.

CNBC's framing leaned into that uncertainty, citing unnamed analysts warning the conflict "risks becoming a forever war." That's a fair concern given the ceasefire's collapse and the tit-for-tat escalation. Trump's own framing is that the strikes are coercive leverage aimed at forcing Iran back to a deal, not indefinite bombing for its own sake.

What's Actually Unresolved

The most concrete open question is whether Trump follows through on hitting Iranian power plants and bridges next week if no deal materializes. That would mark a serious escalation beyond military and coastal targets into civilian infrastructure, and it's the kind of move that would draw scrutiny even from allies. Iran's threat to close "all other export corridors" beyond the Strait of Hormuz is the mirror-image risk: a wider regional energy shutdown that would hit US allies as hard as it hits Washington. Neither side has confirmed a return date for negotiations.